Whole Foods gift cards 16.7% off via Gyft

Gyft is a website/app that sells and stores gift cards.  Very useful for not carrying around the 20 different gift cards that belong in your drawer, not your wallet.  Currently Gyft is giving away a $20 Whole Foods gift card with a $100 Whole Foods gift card purchase (16.7% off $120) using code WFMWISH valid for 3 uses per account ($360 worth of gift cards).  Promotion ends on 12/28 or while supplies last.

Buying Whole Foods Gift cards at a discount

(update - Cartera has wised up and has stopped paying out miles for e-gift cards at Staples)

It's easy to make fun of Whole Foods Market, which really doesn't do anything to shed its nickname of Whole Paycheck.  What makes it worse is that they often say and do things that make it clear that they themselves think they're overpriced, whether it's launching a new store with lower prices (um, how about just lowering prices in your current stores?) or just admitting to Wall Street that its prices are too high (oops).

So how to justify shopping there?  How about getting a discount on gift cards?

• Easy: You might have a special credit card that rebates you 5% or even 6% on groceries.  Best bet?  Perhaps the Amex Blue Cash Preferred card, which pays you back 6% on the first $6,000 at any grocer.
• Harder: Maybe combine that credit card with the "auto-reload" feature on its gift cards, which promise 10% back on your first reload with diminishing returns on subsequent loads.
• Hardest: The best discount is to acquire frequent flier miles by buying e-gift cards at Staples.  Each mile should be worth 1.5 to 2 cents (providing you can find a seat).

How does that work?  Well, Staples advertises through several shopping portals, including many of the airline shopping portals that are run by Cartera such as Alaska's, United's, American's, and Southwest's.  Physical gift cards don't earn miles, but e-gift cards usually do from Cartera portals despite terms that say they aren't supposed to.  So, combine the following 3 discounts:

1. Credit card: Chase's Ink card gives you 5 Ultimate rewards points per dollar spent at Staples.
2. Airline shopping portal: Earn 2-5 miles back (look for frequent earning bonuses by checking out Cashback Monitor).  Hint: United is offering 4 miles back right now.
3. Airline shopping portal bonus: During certain times of the year, the above portals pay out bonuses for hitting a certain amount of spending through their portal.  That is an additional 2-4 miles per dollar.  Right now, for the back-to-school shopping season, many Cartera portals are offering bonuses including: United, American, Southwest!

The haul?  5 + 4-ish + 4-ish = ~13 miles per dollar you spend at Whole Foods.  That should be worth at least 1.5 cents per mile, or ~20% back in airline travel for every dollar you spend at Whole Foods!

And it doesn't end there...how about other e-gift cards?  Why not EARN 13 MILES PER DOLLAR ON EVERYTHING YOU BUY!  Staples carries e-gift cards from:

• Target
• eBay
• Home Depot
• Lowes
• Gamestop (if you find a store that does it, you can buy Amazon gift cards with these!)
• ...

Groupon offering $10 e-gift card for $5

Whole Foods Market is offering a $10 e-gift card for $5 through Groupon. These offers usually do not last long!

Another Whole Foods discount through Amex

American Express offers $10 off a $75 purchase at Whole Foods if you tweet #AmexWholeFoods. It's not as good as last year's $20 off the same amount, but now that I have signed up all my cards (including my additional card holders for multiple savings per card), I can stretch these discounts a bit further. If you prefer Facebook over Twitter, you can sign up for this same promotion by heading to the Amex Like Link Love app on Facebook.

Amex discounts via Twitter

(expires April 30)

American Express is giving away some nice discounts when you pimp out your Twitter account.  Just sync your Twitter account (or a newly created one just for this purpose) and tweet various hashtags to get discounts.  Some examples include:

• $20 off $75 at Whole Foods with #AmexWholefoods
• $10 off $100 at Best Buy with #AmexBestBuy
• $10 off $75 at Zappos with #AmexZappos

Watch this video to see how it works:

Get $10 off $50 at Whole Food Market from Amex

(expires February 29)

American Express' long-running promotion called "Like, Link, Love" is an evil way of giving marketers your personal information. But for some things, like 10 bucks to spend at Whole Foods, it just might be worth it. If you haven't already signed up for Like, Link, Love, you need to give Amex access to your (fake?) Facebook profile, register a card, and then click to "add" this coupon to your card.

If you are willing to pimp your privacy for another $10, check out this promo from Foursquare.